


at last, a rest

by ZPumpkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blanket Forts, Found Family, Gen, Speculation, Swearing, kind of hurt/comfort?, mollymauk (mentioned) - Freeform, weeks in the future but not many
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26999458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZPumpkin/pseuds/ZPumpkin
Summary: Eiselcross has exhausted them a dozen times over, and sleep is little more than a reprieve from sore muscles and aching bodies. But tonight, they need something more than exhaustion to recover, and prepare. Tomorrow looms, but tonight belongs to the Nein.
Kudos: 45





	at last, a rest

Beau jerks awake, hissing as hot wax from the candle trickles onto the back of her hand. The notes she’s spent this evening writing are ruined, the ink smeared across the page and most likely her cheek, drool staining the paper. Well. Not like she had written anything fucking useful, for all her efforts. Weeks and weeks trekking across Eiselcross, listening and sometimes goading Vess into giving history lessons so boring even Caleb grew to hate them - all that patience and prying coming to shit all.

She wipes her hand across her cheek, finds that the ink has fully dried, and throws the pile of papers into the air with a pained groan. Watches as one piece flutters into the guttering candle and slowly catches. Should probably go to bed, Beau figures, if she’s fighting paper. Right after she dunks her head in the bath, she probably looks like a clown right now.

Lying in bed, she stares up into the canopy ceiling, waiting for the burn in her eyes to become sleep. Instead it remains a consistent pain in the ass, prickling and scratchy and hot. Idly, Beau pulls the cord down so she sees her reflection; all this time in the cold and cloud cover has given her an unhealthy paleness and thick bags under her eyes. Her undercut’s gone all to shit, since no one had the energy at night to do any kind of self care. Her eyes follow the three thick, jagged lines of her newest scar, some giant frozen lizard that was so desperate to murder Caleb it damn near ripped her arm off.

She looks more of a mess than she’s strictly comfortable being, too much worn down and not enough suave shit-kicker. And she still can not sleep. The whole idea behind having the Tower tonight, of Caleb saving his power through a day of awful mutated monsters and terrible cold, was so they could rest before the big day. Vess all but demanded it, since apparently miss Bitch the Scholarly was too good to prepare housing for her mercenaries.

Half a mile from their ‘camp’ is the carved tunnel leading straight down into ice and stone, and deeper still into the core of a dead city. Even Beau could feel the _wrongness_ of the magic, a sting like salt in wounds, like ice lashing against skin. 

So, she was awake because of nerves? Cause that’s still really stupid. Beau’s basically spit in the face of some apocalypse god and then played diplomat with the king an hour later, the fuck does she have to be nervous about?

(She knows exactly what she’s nervous about, she’s seen it mirrored every day for days and days and restless nights. In Jester’s fangs worrying her lip. Fjord running his fingers carefully over the runes of his sword. Caleb’s distant look as he buried his hands in Frumpkin’s fur. Veth fretting and worrying and violently flinching whenever she reaches for where her flask was. Caduceus looking more out of place than he ever has, whispering to the wind every morning, every evening. Yasha’s pained eyes, Yasha’s careful guarding of her flower book, Yasha refusing to show her wings and covering her brightening hair and hiding all the ways she has become changed over the months.)

The Mighty Nein are always chasing after something, it seems. Maybe because every time they caught up it ended horribly. Obann, Uko’toa, nearly imprisoned by the Bright Queen then by King Dwendal. The Iron Shepherds. Better to always be running, to or from something it hardly seemed to matter. And this time is turning out the same as every other fucking time. They have chased, limping and bleeding, into the icy wastes and they are still a ways behind - thanks to the Tomb Taker’s fucking head start. But now they’re about to catch up. No more running.

In the heart of a dead city, something walks in the body of a dead friend, preparing to raise an alien nightmare. If Beau felt poetic or morbid, or both, she’d say it was the dead raising the dead. Some kind of terrible cycle that can’t ever end.

Beau blinks as her eyes water, swipes her hand over them and yanks the mirror closed. There’s no noise in her room but the shift of sheets as she wrestles them. The bed doesn’t even creak, too magic for even that. And Beau hates it, hates the quiet that amplifies the echo chamber of her fucked up thoughts. This isn’t what she wants right now - she can’t deal with it - it’s not what she needs - she needs - she needs…

She bursts through the doors of her chamber and out into the central lift room, thinks _Down_ so viciously that she actually has to catch herself before she smashes into the salon. Stumbling into a couch, Beau looks around at the space, remembering impromptu childhood hiding-from-the-law sleepovers. Then throws her head back with a muffled scream as she realizes there’s no blankets or anything here, of course there isn’t.

Minutes later she’s back, carrying a tangled bundle of her bedding. She tosses it to the side and gets to work, moving couches and chairs around, at one point going back to retrieve the spare bo staffs.

Beau’s a good way through a sizable tent-like ceiling, buttressed by couches and staffs, when Jester announces herself with a, “Knock knock?”

“Yo,” Beau calls, tipping a huge armchair over and tucking a blanket beneath the headrest.

“Can I come in?”

“It’s a public space, Jess,” Beau replies. “Wait, actually, go get some cat snacks. That’s the admission price.”

“Right,” Jester says, all seriousness, and Beau hears her pad away, the woosh as she ascends to the dining room. That’s actually a design flaw Beau hasn’t thought about before - there’s no cat delivery doors in the salon. Huge oversight, really, who doesn’t want to eat while reading books.

Xenoth is who but no one cares about his fucking opinion.

Jester returns with another pair of footsteps, and Beau pokes her head out of her sanctuary to see Fjord, wearing pants and a backwards shirt, carrying a single tray to Jester’s two. “I brought Fjord snacks too!” Jester announces, and Fjord gives the room a flat look.

Beau looks at him. “Mh, think I’m allergic, that one’s all yours.”

“If this is how tonight’s going to be, I’m getting back up,” Fjord announces. He drops the tray on a table and goes floating up the lift, out of sight.

Jester laughs quietly as she plops down, pulling her own blanket around herself like a cocoon. She lets Beau work in silence for a bit, until even Beau can’t pretend she’s doing anything useful; just fiddling with cloth edges and shifting a chair back and forth.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jester says.

“Ya think?”

“I do,” she replies, head cocked to one side like she’s listening to someone else, to Artagan probably. “I really, really do.”

Beau stares into the soft shadows of the blanket fort, breathes through her nose, and nods. “Right.”

Soon enough Fjord returns, all but dragging a confused Caleb while the rest of the Nein file in behind. Veth dives in, throwing pillows and blankets all about the place and making herself a messy nest beside Jester. Caduceus follows in slowly, careful with the steaming kettle in his hand. His expression - the look of someone misplaced, out of place, never in their right place, the one that rips at her heart because she knows it so well, seen it before in mirrors - begins to melt.

“C’mon, Deuces, we have some cups - er, wine glasses. Whatever. It holds liquid,” Beau shouts to him, grins as finally, fucking finally, his easy, kind smile returns.

“Suppose I’m not one to pick at differences,” Caduceus says as he folds himself up against the high backed chair that holds up one corner. Beau holds out two wine glasses that he fills, then clinks them in a toast to nothing. “This is real nice. Cozy,” he adds.

“If you got any tips for making Firbolg sized blanket forts, I’m open. Last time I made one was, like, seven years ago and I was even smaller then.” He chuckles, hums like he does when he’s remembering something, and Beau elbows him lightly. “You belong here, man,” she whispers. “We’re getting our old friend back, and I bet he’d love to meet you. You’re not going anywhere unless you want to.”

“I know,” Caduceus whispers back, cradling his wineglass. The hot tea is making the glass sweat, makes it slick, so they both keep readjusting their grip. “It’s just odd, to hear the stories then meet the person. A little nerve wracking, maybe. I usually do it the other way around.”

Beau shrugs and drinks her tea, watches as Veth teaches Caleb how to make some kind of Halfling delicacy; it turns out to be layers of cheese and bread almost as tall as her head. Laughs as Caleb gamely tries to take a bite of it and nearly dislocates his jaw. Jester and Fjord shimmy their way next to Caduceus, and Beau catches mention of the Harvest Close festival before she tears her attention away.

Yasha sits quietly, but not far - Beau specifically made the fort so it would fit all of them just barely, not enough room for someone to be distant unless they left. She’d been nervous in the process, that someone would actually leave, that they’d want to be alone tonight of all nights. But Yasha’s there, legs crossed, weaving a handful of roses and lavender together.

Beau pours tea into a whiskey tumbler - seriously who was in charge of getting glassware - leaves the holy team to their reminiscing and slides next to Yasha. Offers her the glass and waits until Yasha notices.

“Oh,” she says. She sounds, looks, even softer than normal, the muddled light from the fireplace seeping orange-gold through the blankets, all the shadows smoothed and lazy along the lines of her tattoo and the dark of her hair. “Thank you.”

“Thank Caduceus,” Beau tells her. Yasha’s eyes flick to her, then to the tea, then to the flowers. They settle next to each other as the warmth of shared body heat and quiet chattering fills the space. Caleb makes his way closer to the cleric huddle and, after a whispered request from Jester, waves his hands and makes a small illusion of Molly, looking skyward in awe, splashed in colorful fireworks.

“Are you okay?” Beau asks, when their tea runs low.

“I… don’t know.” Yasha twirls the stem of a lavender through her fingers, thumb brushing the petals. “Some days I think, all of this will end okay. That it is not going to be easy, but we’ll be okay. Then others, I remember what it was like to… to be someone else, and trapped, and feeling so alone.”

Beau grabs Yasha’s hand on a knee-jerk reaction, her fingers careful over the delicate skin of the flower. Yasha hiccups a breath, surprise and held back tears. Opens her hand so that Beau’s fingers gently slot between her knuckles.

“You came back,” Beau says. “It sucked, yeah, but you came back to us. Molly will too, once we find him, cause honestly that’s the hard part. Once we’re face to face we’re just going say fuck it to the plan and make the whole thing a hundred times more insane than it needs to be.” Yasha snorts a quiet laugh, and Beau grins crookedly. “And, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re all really shit at letting people go.”

Yasha pulls her hand away, wraps a small, uneven bracelet of flowers around Beau’s wrist and ties it off. “We’ve all lost a lot,” she murmurs. Then, with an almost sacred care, she holds another flower weave to Beau. Beau takes it, hesitates, tries not to read too much or too little into this, the silk soft petals and the paleness of Yasha’s wrist held up like an offering as Beau ties the ends over her pulse. “We won’t lose anything else.”

Then Yasha takes her hand, palm to palm, flower to flower and pulse to pulse, and holds it firm between their bodies. The entirety of Beau’s insides, gut to heart, stutters and trips over itself as she keeps herself still - the Monk training has some uses, after all. They sit together in their quiet corner, watching their friends, this misshapen family, eat the finger foods a procession of ghostly cats march into their little haven. Quiet jokes are passed along, old memories shared. Eventually, the fireplace falls low, and whispers become hands on shoulders, eyes meeting in the dim light, a shared look of worry, and determination, and hope.

Tomorrow still looms. A dead city, a maybe dead friend, and whatever nightmare is waiting for them in the deep. But as the Nein begin to nod off, Beau watches the fear of it all slough off, at least for this hour. Feels lighter herself, now that the burden is so openly acknowledged, shared.

“You’re coming home,” she whispers, settling in to the tangle Yasha’s made as bedding. “No matter what it takes, you’re coming home you obnoxious purple bastard.”


End file.
